Abstract: Objective To investigate the value of acid-fast staining in pathological diagnosis of tuberculosis(TB). Methods  Nine hundred and fourteen TB cases (485 male, 429 female) with acid-fast staining admitted to our hospital from 2000 to 2012 were analyzed retrospectively. SPSS 20.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Statistical comparisons were performed usingχ² test, and P value less than 0.05 was considered statistical significant. Results  Among the 914 patients positive rate of acid-fast staining was 31.95% (292/914). The positive rates of endobronchial TB, intestinal TB were 48.24％(41/85),58.06％(18/31) respectively，which were higher than that of pulmonary TB (33.33%, 72/216) with statistical significant differences (χ²=5.777, P<0.05; χ²=7.159, P<0.05); while the positive rates of pleural TB, spinal TB and osteoarthral TB were 19.78％(18/91),16.52％(19/115),12.00％(6/50) respectively, which were lower than that of pulmonary TB, with statistical significant differences (χ²=5.676, P<0.05; χ²=10.640, P<0.05; χ²=8.916, P<0.05). The positive rates in male and female patients were 30.93% (150/485) and 33.10% (142/429) respectively, with no statistical significance difference（χ²=0.494，P＞0.05）. Conclusion  Acid-fast staining is still an effective method for the diagnosis of TB. The positive rate can be affected by the lesion site.

Key words: Tuberculosis/diagnosis, Staining and labeling